


Fathers and Daughters

by unfolded73



Series: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, Pete's World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is not like other people's fathers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers and Daughters

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published January 20, 2010. What I said at the time: After banging my head against several fics that aren't working, this one came out of nowhere and put itself down onto the page with little fuss. Thus, I'm posting it before it somehow runs away.

She slams the back door of the house, feeling satisfied with the way it rattles the kitchen window. Sarah half expects the doorknob to be wrenched out of her hand, her mother ready to have another go, this time for door-slamming, but it doesn't happen. It makes her feel a sudden wash of guilt, imagining that she's upset her mum enough that she's not even going to bother yelling at her any more.

The back garden is a mess; has been for as long as she can remember. Flower beds never quite weeded properly, tools never quite put away, and always the remnants of some project that doesn't quite fit in her father's work shed. Sarah remembers distinctly the summer of her thirteenth year, when the lawn was dominated by the front end of an old Toyota Prius wired to what she knew were parts of a spaceship salvaged from Torchwood. The fact of the spaceship was less important to her at the time than the fact that she couldn't bring any mates over to the house without awkward explanations. But that is her life, it feels like sometimes: a series of awkward explanations. Like why her parents had to suddenly run out of her piano recital when she was nine, or why she and her brother get perfect marks without ever needing to study. Why her family is just plain _odd_.

It is toward the work shed that she heads now. Her father is more guilty than her mum of making her life difficult; he's the alien, he's the nine hundred-and-something-year-old who blunders about her fragile teenage existence, embarrassing her, and yet she lets him off easier most of the time. Maybe _because_ he's the alien, and Sarah knows something about feeling alien.

She pushes open the rusty door and goes inside. 

Fluorescent lights illuminate benches covered with tools and the detritus of projects in various stages of progress or abandonment. She hears a clunk and a muffled curse from under the computer console that lines one wall, and she crouches down next to a pair of trainer-clad feet.

"Dad? You okay?"

"Yeah. Hang on a tic." She hears the click-click-click of a ratcheting screwdriver.

"Where's your sonic?"

Another moment and he pulls himself out from under the console, throwing the ordinary screwdriver into a toolbox. "Burned out the power supply. Can't repair it until I can get another, which means relying on finding one in Torchwood's archives or waiting for one to fall out of the sky. Literally," he adds, brushing dirt from his greying hair with one hand.

Her father -- the Doctor, as everyone else knows him -- stands up with a wince and stretches out his spine. "That floor's not half hard on my back."

Sarah perches on a stool and spins idly from side to side. Three of the computer monitors are dark, and two flicker with mixtures of English and Gallifreyan. She has no problem reading either, but she isn't interested in her dad's research at the moment.

"Everything all right?" he asks her, an eyebrow arched in her direction. 

"Had a row with Mum."

He heaves a sigh, dropping into his chair. His eyes flit briefly to the monitors, but are back on her before she can deflect the topic of conversation. "I don't understand the two of you. It's like, it's like you and your mum can turn a verifiable statement of fact -- how much milk is left in the fridge, for example -- into an argument. How do you _do_ that?"

Sarah shrugs, still spinning her stool.

"Mothers and daughters," he sighs. "I'd forgotten ..." He trails off, his eyes far away.

She knows he had children before, centuries before, but he never speaks of them. She probably shouldn't ask, but the question slips out before she can stop it. "You had daughters?"

He looks at her sharply, as if he hadn't even realised he spoke. "One," he finally answers, standing up and turning to one of the benches, his back to her. Just when she thinks he's put an end to any more talk on that subject, he adds, "And sisters. I had sisters."

He's committed the double sin of having mentioned something that not only was from his life as a Time Lord, but from before he left Gallifrey. He does that so rarely, and Sarah sits at attention, absorbing every morsel of information of this lost Time Lord family, long dead and locked away before she was even thought of. Before her parents had even met.

"So I remember how mothers and daughters can be," he finishes, dusting off his hands as if ridding himself of the reminiscence. "You need to give your mum a break. She's got her hands full, what with you lot and Torchwood and ... well, being married to me," he says with a wink. "I'm not that easy to be married to." He gestures around at the clutter, a gesture that probably encompasses the house as well.

"All men litter the place," Sarah says, sniffing.

He laughs. "My darling, would that that were my only fault."

Sarah isn't sure what he means, and it makes her feel out of her depth. She isn't used to feeling out of her depth, even with her father, and she doesn't like it. "You make love sound so complicated," she says. "But it's simple."

"Ah, have it all figured out at seventeen, do you? Relationships, marriage, all that?"

"No," she retorts. "I just know that if you love someone--"

"Falling in love is simple," he interrupts. "Losing someone, having your heart broken, even that's simple. It's building a life together. It's maintaining it, nurturing it, keeping it healthy for the rest of your lives. _That's_ what's complicated." He holds her gaze with the expression he saves for _very serious discussions_. "And if I'm still fumbling occasionally after all these years--"

"Then what hope do _I_ have?"

"Well, to be fair, I'm very stupid. You should make it a policy to refer any questions about love or relationships to your mother." He grins at her.

"I do anyway."

"Quite right," he nods, but then narrows his eyes. "These questions about love, they wouldn't happen to involve that bloke with the hair, would they?" Before she can answer, he barrels on. "Because human males ... you have to trust me when I say that human males are ... the things that go through their minds when it comes to sex are disgusting and depraved and--"

"Dad, please stop before I sick up all over the floor."

"Stopping." He's watching her carefully, and then he pats her on the back. "Go apologise to your mother."

"Fine." Sarah glances at her father's computer console again on her way out. "I think you need to reverse the polarity on the gravimeter; that's why you're getting those off-scale readings."

Her dad stares at the spinning script on the monitor for a bit, scrubbing his hand over his mouth. "Blimey, _this_ is what getting old feels like."

"I think what you mean to say is, 'Sarah, you're brilliant'."

"And modest too," he smirks. "Although modesty is overrated. And you are, of course. Brilliant. My brilliant daughter."

She feels the impulse to cringe at his blatant affection, but Sarah forces herself to smile instead. "That's me."


End file.
